Shutting down my Mastodon instance

I was using Masto.host hosted Mastodon instance at social.thej.in for a year (Week 07/2024). I am shutting it down for now and returning to social.lol/@thej account.

There are a couple of reasons for doing this.

1. Cost: It started at $6/pm, and now I pay $19/pm + taxes. Running a federated social media platform just for yourself (It keeps copies on your server just for you) costs more. It is a waste of energy compared to running it for a bigger group or community. I wish there were a society or NPO that would run this for us for a fee, of course.
2. Usage: I am using less and less social media; also, what I post on social media has value in a time-bound way and doesn't require archival as such. Anything important goes on this blog or thej.in
3. Community: I like omg.lol/social.lol community. I would like to continue to support and participate. They are very affordable. And have a very friendly community.

So what changes

1. For most of my followers, nothing should change. Mastodon has good followers/following migration. So, for all of you, it should work as it is.
2. I wish there were a way to map individual accounts on any server to a DNS name in Mastodon. Hopefully, one day, we will have it. As of now, I have used webfinger discovery to forward the account. So @[email protected] should reach @[email protected]. It uses a simple static site for this.
3. There will be link rots to individual post URLs, mainly on Twitter, which, frankly speaking, I don't care.
4. Anything significant will be backed up and archived on thej.in

Sorry about all the confusion. It's part of a hosting experiment, I guess.

Thank you.